


The Proud Can Feel

by noisystar



Category: BioShock
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Dysfunctional Relationships, Experimental Style, Headcanon, M/M, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-16 19:40:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1359460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noisystar/pseuds/noisystar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by <a href="http://biotrash.dreamwidth.org/427.html?thread=1195#cmt1195">this prompt</a></p>
<p>Jack is able to unite with Atlas after Ryan's attack at the Smuggler's Hideout. The ensuing series of events brings out layers of Atlas (in reality, Frank) that even he hasn't encountered for a very long time...</p>
<p>Update: (Never really finished... sorry! I've moved on...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Sentence in Silence

**Author's Note:**

> This is an experimental piece and my first attempt at Bioshock fanfiction, so any and all comments/critique/thoughts are very welcomed and appreciated. Thank you!

He opened his eyes to an unwelcome blackness, where within there were only infrequent pocks of light that decayed into jaundiced yellow dust. Dead veins of infertile gray glistened against hard and chiseled shadows, smearing into view like old blood as Atlas regained the events that had led him to this place.

“Wh-where’re we goin’?”

His breath came in short gasps, his insides a swill of inky blackness. His midsection convulsed in an attempt to disavow the titan’s preciously red and shining wound, which was opened up and exposed to light as the result of some misguided brand of violence.

Jack was grunting in a flighty rattle that landed coarsely in Atlas’s ears. Atlas’s arm was stretched harrowingly, as if by rack, over Jack’s unforgivingly broad shoulders, and Jack’s hand served as the inexorable roller that threatened to snap the ligaments in Atlas’s arm. It was almost a relief to be distracted from his onerously open abdomen.

“We—we’ve got to get to Arcadia,” Atlas insisted. He blinked in defiance against the rocky blur around him, his frustration causing his vision to suffer and roll, unwilling to accept how far it appeared they had strayed from his plan. The walls rose up and displayed perdition swathed in tiled floors, flickering lights, and the ominously broken emblem that read _Medical Pavilion_.

Ryan’s splicers had been an expected rebuff at the submarine bay, but in Jack was a combustible unpredictability. When the explosion had collapsed in clouds of wet dust around him, Atlas lurked towards his perfect disappearance. There was no doubt in his mind that Jack would use his godly-given abilities to get himself out in due time. However, Atlas had underestimated just how quickly Jack would be able to fight through the splicers: a crest of flame expanded in front of him through the cryptic turbulence and spread in wings to wrap around Atlas’s midsection like a misconstrued gift. The fire seemed to lick like a sash up through to his throat, from which Atlas felt and heard something punishing and bird-like in a shackled version of his own voice. The flare pecked through his clothes and skin and he turned to see his assailant flying towards him.

Atlas had not bargained for coming face to face with The Prodigal Son at any point in time. A significant part of his plot had been to specifically not meet the man with his own eyes. He knew now how right he was to avoid the encounter.

In front of Atlas stood a confused and hulking chimera framed by the singed and narrowed corners of his vision. The man’s brow and jaw looked like they were hoven by thumbs pressing into clay, unnaturally square with oblong edges that were eerily reminiscent of the boy Fontaine placed into the sub two years ago. His nose had been smashed into existence while his mouth was like a jagged line drawn through mud by a bored god, a ploy, a gag with no foreseeable purpose as if Suchong had been playing at an ironic joke. His shoulders bowed as if a downed bird lurching in protest from the greedy sea. Surrounded by all this and pushed into confused, defensive shadows were his eyes. His eyes gleamed and grew with startling light, vast and unreserved, and while Atlas couldn’t help but stare into them they provoked a suffering sense of unease. Then he was reminded of his searing infliction.

“Boyo!” Atlas groaned, feigning optimism and curling his arm protectively around his stomach. He saw the recognition in Jack’s face as his eclectic eyes fell to the burning skin. Jack collapsed to Atlas’s side with an earthy huff, unintentionally grabbing onto Atlas’s burn and sending a searing blankness through his skull.

Atlas imagined Jack had fought the both of them out of there. He wavered in and out of full consciousness along the way, in and out of Atlas and Fontaine and sanity.

“Where are we, lad?” Atlas managed within the burning turmoil of his frustration at the revelation of their surroundings. “The damn _Medical Pavilion?_ ” He winced with either fury or pain. “Are you up the pole?! Why would you bring us here?”

Jack deposited Atlas onto an exam table with the ceremony of a malformed bird taking on too large of a prey, an eagle with an unwieldy chunk of Prometheus. Atlas moaned as he tumbled onto his back against the cold rock, his burn stretching and tearing with the clothes over his skin. The room was layered in rot and the dank, deceased wilderness that Atlas usually managed to avoid on his end of the radio.

“You’re a safe pair of hands,” Atlas’s Irish lilt trickled through the congesting stench of stale slaughter. “But I can manage myself, _boyo_. We just need to get to Arcadia, to Ryan—“ Atlas lurched a hissing, sour breath in agony. Jack’s hands came from the corrugated darkness; he seized Atlas against the table with a mistaken brutality. Atlas gazed in surprise at Jack, who looked at him with something as bare as - innocent concern.

“Let me help you,” Jack finally spoke. It was the voice of a grown man; the only thing that gave away his true four-year-old nature was the naiveté that dragged open his eyelids into that merciless puppy dog stare.

Atlas stared back at him, in awe of his own helplessness. Finally, he troubled himself to relent – for now. “Don’t leave me with much of a choice, do ya lad?” He subsided and carefully lowered back onto the table. “But why all the way to the Medical Pavilion? We need to keep moving forward. We’re not through yet! We could’ve made short shrift in Arcadia…” he cursed the boy’s foolishness and their lost time, tactfully translating it into an appearance of lament for his lost family.

Jack busied himself with the materials he could scavenge to tend the burn. Atlas was distracted by how much Jack’s head swiveled about to look at him. His face flickered back and forth, over his shoulder, lifting up from whichever angle necessary to get a glance at Atlas. Atlas became conscious of his heavier eyebrows, the bulb on the end of his nose, his clean-shaven upper lip, each feature as Jack’s eyes wisped back and forth between his face and his stomach. It was pissing him off. “Ryan… that bastard...” Atlas vented, blistering. He allowed himself to believe in the loss of family, a pain he was always too proud to feel unless it was a lie at its core. He needed to get Jack back in the game. “We’ll get him. We’ll find him, and we’ll tear his damn heart out…” In the midst of his brooding, Atlas had the pleasure of experiencing something like hooks chaining themselves to the edges of his open lesion as Jack fussed over him, unbidden, unwelcome, like an intruder eating away at the hard skin Atlas had so painstakingly crafted. “Christ!” Atlas howled, jolting up through the agony of his vulnerable skin. “Do ya even know what in damn Hell you’re doin’?! Get this off me.” Atlas indicated his shirt with a rough, feeble jerk.

Jack moved with a morose eagerness, the appearance from which Atlas found himself curtly turning away. He held himself up with his arms as Jack began tugging at the end of his shirt. “Might wanna undo the buttons, first off…” Atlas grimaced. Jack nodded, hurriedly obliging with his clumsy, calloused fingers. Atlas closed his eyes and waited, trying not to breathe in any more of the fetid infliction.

He sighed. “Sorry for the outburst, boyo. If it weren’t fer…” Atlas trailed off suggestively, allowing Jack to assume the rest.

Jack’s hands slid tentatively over his shoulders, his palms abrasive as they combed over his skin. His hands were unpleasantly stifling. Atlas kept his eyes lowered, almost holding his breath. He stiffened in defense against this man, who knelt so close to his cover and was yet still allowed to live. Atlas’s sleeves fell loose and the straps of his suspenders dropped off. His shirt was tenderly peeled away layer by agonizing layer from his stomach, leaving his wound fully exposed and unallied.

Atlas knew Jack would attribute his flinching and detachedness to the loss he had apparently just suffered rather than the clanking manacles of a con man suddenly insecure of his cover. If Jack looked close enough with those gaping eyes of his, he might see that forgotten abyss between the cracks in his mask, and wouldn’t that be a fake out for ol’ Frank? He felt as if the tear in his gut was threatening to play Pandora’s Box and release his cancerous secrets.

Yet Jack carefully bandaged the burn, sensitively shutting it away and tucking the lies out of sight where they could remain useful. Atlas watched Jack with an unwelcome diffidence. He unwittingly glanced into Jack’s eyes and suddenly it felt as if the wound hadn’t been tended to at all.

Jack uttered the inevitable condolence. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s Ryan.” The name shivered and swelled in Atlas’s seething voice. Returning to his tissue of lies and all the weaves of hate left a pleasing taste in his mouth.

“I want to do something for you.” Jack said. Music to Atlas’s ears.

“ _No_ _boher_ ,” Atlas thanked darkly. “Matter of fact, there is somethin’ you could do.”

“Can you walk?” Jack initiated.

“That I can,” Atlas replied, thoughtlessly assuming Jack had caught on to the commonly woven motive of revenge. Jack wrapped his arm around Atlas, aided him off the table, and began leading him through the solitary halls.   



	2. Break In Character

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Atlas pay their respects for Moira and Patrick in The Crematorium. Atlas, impaired by his burn, faces what really lay in those empty coffins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> any critique is super appreciated. thank you!

“Uh, Boyo, if you don’t mind me mentionin’ – Arcadia is _that_ way.”

Jack said nothing and continued steering them both through the Medical Pavilion. In his silence was his depriving sentence: they weren’t yet going to Arcadia. Apparently, the boy would rather be trapped in this hellhole for a wee bit longer while Atlas dealt with his burning scar. “We haven’t got _time_ to be actin’ the maggot, boyo! Take me back to Arcadia, would you k-” He seized at a sudden fluctuation of his injury and felt impatience and fury like heavy chains clashing in his head.

“I will do whatever you want,” Jack stared at Atlas openly as they made their way over the precipice of Dandy Dental. “But let me do this for you first. If you don’t take the time to…” He trailed off, troubled. His features, however broad and statue-like, were strikingly human against their blood-stained and lightless backdrop. His sigh was like wind whispering through stone. “I don’t want you to lose yourself. This place has done a lot of damage. But I’ve learned that you can fight it…”

Jack did not continue. Atlas tried to keep himself from dwelling on Jack’s voice as he and Jack hauled his wounded body down the hallways.

He brought them to the wretchedly doctrinal Twilight Fields Funeral Homes. It boasted all the lewd lighting of a confession booth and was attentively perfumed with the scent of sour metal and the stewing, sorry wallies that had been whistled down the wind. It was all Atlas could do not to roll his eyes at their destination.

Jack slid him onto a cushion in the lobby then waded through the debris of the abandoned atrium and out of sight. Atlas waited, tensing, clutching his burning stomach.

When Jack returned, he was towing a large, open casket with a small child’s coffin inside. Atlas could only jeer internally at the thought of some stiff being thrown out of the last decency of a coffin. Rigor mortis had been the sorry clown’s last and indifferent caretaker, posing the arms and legs as if for a tacky laugh in a revelation of life’s big prank.  It would rot alone on the hard floor, where it would spend the rest of its eternal sentence given to it by the misguided sentimentality of Jack. Atlas strangled his laughter into a convincing sob.

Inside the small coffin was a stuffed bear. The thing was a color that might have once been a domineering golden hue, like a naive imitation of the colossal and malicious bear figure Fontaine had erected sentinel in his apartment. Now, it had been stripped to a hideous and sickly naked-yellow.

Jack placed a hand on Atlas’s bare shoulder, igniting him from the deep thought he had apparently let himself reduce to as he had stared at the bear. “We can bring these to the Crematorium.” Jack suggested empathetically. The benevolence in Jack felt bizarre, unexpected, and unwelcome – Atlas coldly wondered if this was how he had acted while he had been asleep topside, mechanically performing the movements of each day like the mockery of a man that he was. He knew Jack had no true memories or experiences to contrive this ceremony of mourning from; Jack didn’t even have any _fake_ memories of any kind of loss. There was only the exception of being awakened, of being brought to Rapture; one might consider that to be a loss if the whole ‘ignorance is bliss’ idiom wasn’t complete bunk only told by idiots to susceptible children.

Once again, Atlas found himself helplessly blinking away from those eyes. “Aye, lad.” He presented a melancholy sigh of recognition. He would continue entertaining the charade—there would be a reward in it for Atlas, whose divine pleasure it was to create deception and to witness his audience believe it lock, stock, and barrel.

They hauled the caskets to the Crematorium. The golden light of fire flickered just behind the grate of its prison, flashing in Jack’s eyes as he led Atlas down the hollow corridor.

Malodorous, pensive silence had been Atlas’s verdict for so long that he only noticed it once Jack broke through it. “Would you like to say something?” They stood beside each other, looking over the coffins placed on the tray that would relinquish them into the fire. A bleak smell emanated from the furnace.

Atlas reminded himself that the most arduous cons were the most rewarding.

“Not sure what I could possibly say to them… To make up for…”

Jack seemed thoughtful as he responded. “Say something about your memories with them. In this place… Isn’t that all that we have?”

Atlas had a question for Jack in response: Doesn’t that mean you have _nothing,_ you contrived anathema _?_ Jack managed some strange words for a monster so bereft. How desperate the primitive mind truly was to commit to such a baseless philosophy.

As divinely ironic as the sentiment was, Jack had put Atlas in an unenviable position. Conspiratorially, Atlas eased into bloated memories.

“I never told you much about me Moira, did I? Didn’t get the chance…”

“No. Tell me about her. You have a chance.”

“Where to start?” Atlas sighed bitterly. “She was a tough dolly, that Moira. The prettiest one, too. She loved to dance and dance… and she’d drink like there was no tomorrow and be none the worse for it.” He had these stories lined up.

His eyes were drawn to the smaller coffin. Inside, the stuffed bear lay inanimate and hollow. A tear in its stomach revealed the bereft, withered stuffing, which had rotted to dust long ago.

“And Patrick… He was just a nip. Be the livin’ Jesus, he was as curious as could be. Had to raise me hand to him more than a few times…” That’s what fathers do, he recalled. Then there was the inevitable reaction of a know-nothing brat, kneeling on the cold, vulnerable concrete of a stoop as he watched his father walk away for the last time, his gangling arm weak from struggling, his wrist rubbed raw from a grip he could not break, his palm still smarting from the lit end of a cigarette. Atlas burned with the untouched memory as his mind began to abhorrently crack, a screeching growing in his head like epileptic, rusted chains. “And he would whine like the cotton-mouthed, ignorant little shit that he was…” Jack’s brow furrowed, obviously confused. Atlas realized what had happened while he had been staring into the decay of the stuffed bear—he had been overwhelmed by a bitterly forbidden nostalgia and his voice had dropped into a slow Bronx undulation.

The fear in his burn tore and pecked at him. His head felt heavy and shackled. He searched spitefully for something to add. He remembered his Dublin accent, his voice reaching a strangled pitch.

“…Moira was a great mum. Cared for Patrick dearly. It offers just the smallest bit of comfort that they were allowed to stay together. Nothin’ could tear ‘em apart…” Atlas’s face relished the obscuring shadows between the flickering of the furnace. “Until _Ryan_.” He found comfort in the familiar tickle of revenge on his tongue.

The funeral seemed excuse enough for Jack to ignore Atlas’s break in character.

“She loved you.”

“What?” Atlas almost lost his fake accent again in his surprise.

“She loved you. She must have. She’d follow you anywhere…” Even here, he meant.

“Yes…” Atlas hesitated darkly. “That she would ‘ve…” He narrowed his eyes, thinking for only the briefest moment of the mother he never met. “If she hadn’t been taken away from me. She would have loved me like no one else has. But _he…_ ” He shut himself off, understanding that he wasn’t referring to Andrew Ryan, but the only figure he had ever deigned to remember from his past – the man who had brought him into this world and had just as quickly forgotten him. The pain in his stomach and the flashing of the fire must have been getting to him. He wiped his forehead carefully, chancing a sideways glance at Jack.

Jack was staring directly at him. Atlas’s eyes flickered down Jack’s front. His unknowing, innocent, naïve, available, man’s body. It was a lovely distraction from the two imaginary corpses in front of him, and a compulsion that Atlas had often reverted to when doubt hooked its manacles about him.

Jack seemed to think that Atlas was feeling weak. He reached for Atlas and wrapped his fingers gently around his arm. Atlas looked down at the contact. The chain on Jack’s wrist was broken by the light of the flame reflecting off his skin.

When he looked back up, Jack was staring into the fire. He was visibly lamenting over a loss. Atlas’s godlike crime was to put into this boy the art of feeling. He gave him the ability to relish emotion. It riddled Jack’s illuminated eyes with watery humanity. Atlas had presented Jack with something so real with which to attach himself, the myth of Atlas’s family, like a child believing in Santa Claus. He had never had anything but loneliness, and yet now he was allowed to feel the human experience of losing an ultimate ideal he never even had. Atlas could taste the surge of power like iron on his tongue just from the thought of it. He felt the thick human artery of controlled blood in his fist and up through an invigorating shaft in his center.

Atlas felt a renewed belligerence toward the stinking nostalgia that beat at his barred doors so profusely for the first time since he was a kid; what this experiment of a man was doing to him, so unwittingly, was proving to be one enormous, rifting contradiction. He was reinvigorated as he imagined the prospect of distraction: obligations that were often concerned with fabrications and sex. He grabbed Jack by the wrist and relished the feeling of the raised flesh of his chain and of his breakable skin. Jack faced him with a reticent question, his eyes now bled out of all fire, leaving only their wide, avian shape in resuscitating darkness; and Atlas accepted it all with a nod.

Jack understood. Together, the two men pushed the coffins into the blazing recompense of the furnace, shutting away the flickering light and leaving out the open darkness. The smell of burning plastic in what was left of that stuffed bear was almost instant. Its bitter remnants were dissolved, or at least reduced to wafts of faded ash.

 “Now get us the hell out of here, boyo.”

This time, he wouldn’t have to use ‘would you kindly’.


End file.
